Leaves!

Saturday I got up ealier and took Meg out for a surprise viewing of The Incredibles. I’d write a review of the story (Wonderful!) and of the voice acting (Samuel L. Jackson and Jason Lee, how can you go wrong?) but my problem with seeing Pixar movies, is I have to see them at least twice before I can appreciate them as movies. The first time I watch them, I’m too amazed at how much further they’ve come at animating (simulating?) whatever it is that they’ve decided to focus on. Toy Story, Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2 were all about getting simple character animation down. Monsters, Inc showed a clear emphasis on learning how to simulate the movement of hair. Finding Nemo was all about getting their use of light down, but even watching Nemo, you could see movement of hair that they learned from Monsters really paid off in the way they animated the anenenmeneone. The Incredibles was all about perfecting the hair work they started in Monsters and showing off the light work they got right in Nemo. Not only can we see the hair move when the characters move, we can see the hair get wet, we see each individual strand of hair, and how it has a unique coloration. Moving beyond just hair, you could see light reflected off of their uniforms in a distractingly real way to me. I’ll definitely need to see it again so I’ll be more prepared to pay attention to the story instead of staring in awe at the background and minutiae of character design.

More writing below, none about the above topics though.

The majority of the rest of the day was spent raking leaves. The backyard is mostly done, but I had to stop because I ran out of curb to put the leaves on and ran out of daylight to see the leaves with. Hopefully I can finish the leaves before the weekend, but I don’t have high hopes. It is generally dark by the time I arrive home. why did they decide to stop DST right when it would be useful? Sure, there is light when I wake up, but damn! can’t I have some when driving home from work? stupid artificial time manipulations. </rant>

Oh, and I killed another rake. He was a good rake. not nearly as entertaining as Stubby Jim, The Rake Who Is A Pirate, but a good rake. Only his handle broke, the strong metally bits are still strong, so maybe I will just put him in stasis until future technology can revive him, and replace his weak wooden handle with some sort of liquid metal cyborgy handle.

Fiberglass might be cool too.

While I was raking, Dave and Lon stopped by to steal use some bandwidth and play WoW. Looks like a fun game but I am not going to pay $12 a month to make my wife mad at me. I can do that just fine by myself.

Sunday we went to the late service at church, and I spent most of the time bitting my tongue as the pastor gave a sermon involving a very literal interpretation of Genesis. Next time I get to talk to him, I need to ask how old he thinks the planet is. I’m scared of the answer.

After church their was a meeting about the youth group leadership, and how they want help, which didn’t seem to go anywhere, that was a little disappointing, but we did at least decide to try again at a time that hopefully more people can attend.

The rest of Sunday was spent cleaning house, which it was seriously in need of. Hopefully we’ll do a better job of keeping it up. I skipped playing AU to get everything done, but it was worth it have a clean house and a happy wife. Hopefully my character won’t be drugged like he was last time I skipped a session.

Scott and Brenda from church came by and we had a nice dinner. I made Pad Thai Chicken, which was yummy. Then I futz around with Scott’s visor and got his medical reference books setup correctly. It was a nice evening. Tonight, my parents are coming over, and we’ll cut a hole in a door, and I’ll fix the disaster I made of mom’s website. Note: running SQL update statements without where clauses is a bad thing.

Posted in Gadgets, Home Ownership, Movies